Beowulf: The Critical Heritage (Critical Heritage Series)

620 Pages·1998·2.61 MB·English

by  T. A. Shippey

BEOWULF: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES
GENERAL EDITOR: B.C.SOUTHAM, M.A., B.LITT. (OXON.)
Formerly Department of English, Westfield College, University of London

The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major
figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a
particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to
the writer’s work and its place within a literary tradition.
The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism
to fragments of contemporary opinion and little-published documentary material,
such as letters and diaries.
Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to
demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s death.
For a list of volumes in the series, see the end of the book.
BEOWULF
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
Edited by
T.A.SHIPPEY and ANDREAS HAARDER
London and New York
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Reprinted 2000
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Compilation, introduction, notes © 1998 T.A.Shippey and Andreas Haarder
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Beowulf/[edited by] T.A.Shippey.
p. cm.—(Critical heritage series)
1. Beowulf. 2. Epic poetry, English (Old)—History and
criticism. 3. Civilization, Anglo-Saxon, in literature.
4. Civilization, Medieval, in literature.
I. Shippey, T.A. II. Series.
PR1585.B382 1998
98–8224
CIP
ISBN 0-203-97945-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-02970-8 (Print Edition)
v
General Editor’s Preface
The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near-contemporaries is
evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On the one side we learn
a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the
development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through
private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the
tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind
helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his immediate
reading public, and his response to these pressures.
The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage series present a record of this early
criticism. In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing
the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author’s reception to
what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make
available much material that would otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped
that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of
the ways in which literature has been read and judged.
Professor Shippey’s Beowulf is a particularly welcome addition to the Critical
Heritage series since it calls to our attention European-wide traditions in the study of
language and literature and brings to our notice the relatively recent critical heritage
attached to an ancient poem.
What is especially fascinating, as Professor Shippey brings out so clearly in his
Introduction and head-notes, is the ‘political’ colouration in so many of the
documents represented here. With some irony for a great heroic poem, scholars
have fought over the territories of language, folklore and tradition felt to be at
stake. Notwithstanding these scholarly disputes, Beowulf itself has come through
unscathed, our awareness of its ‘strangely enduring life’ (as Professor Shippey puts
it) informed and sharpened by this illuminating record.
B.C.S.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii
ABBREVIATIONS xv
EDITORIAL PREFACE xvi
INTRODUCTION 1
1 Humfrey Wanley 1705 57
2 Jacob Langebek 1772 59
3 Sharon Turner 1803 61
4 Sharon Turner 1805 63
5 Sharon Turner 1807 71
6 Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín 1815 77
7 Anon. [Peter Erasmus Müller] 1815 83
8 Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig 1815 91
9 Grímur Thorkelín 1815 97
10 Anon. [Abraham Jacob Penzel] 1816 101
11 Nicholaus Outzen (and Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann) 1816 107
12 Anon. [William Taylor] 1816 115
13 Anon. [Gustaf Wilhelm Gumælius] 1817 119
14 N.F.S.Grundtvig 1817 125
15 Anon. [Friedrich Ludewig Bouterwek] 1818 133
16 Ebenezer Henderson 1818 137
17 N.F.S.Grundtvig 1820 139
18 Sharon Turner 1820 143
viii
19 F.C.Dahlmann 1822 149
20 Thomas Silver 1822 151
21 Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm 1823 153
22 Richard Price 1824 157
23 Sir Walter Scott 1824 161
24 John Josias Conybeare 1826 163
25 Wilhelm Karl Grimm 1829 167
26 Joast Hiddes Halbertsma 1829 169
27 N.F.S.Grundtvig 1831 171
28 Henry Wheaton 1831 173
29 John Mitchell Kemble 1832–4 175
30 J.M.Kemble 1833 179
31 J.M.Kemble (and anonymous others) 1834 183
32 Jacob Grimm 1835 189
33 Thomas Wright 1835 193
34 J.M.Kemble 1836 197
35 Jacob Grimm 1836 199
36 Franz Joseph Mone 1836 201
37 J.M.Kemble 1837 207
38 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1838 215
39 Heinrich Leo 1839 219
40 Ernst Moritz Ludwig Ettmüller 1840 223
41 Jacob Grimm 1840 227
42 Isaac Disraeli 1841 229
43 N.F.S.Grundtvig 1841 233
44 Johannes Pieter Arend 1842 237
45 Wilhelm Grimm 1842[?] 241
46 Thomas Wright 1842 243
47 Jacob Grimm 1844 245
ix
48 Karl Victor Müllenhoff (and Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch) 1844 247
49 Thomas Dale 1845 253
50 Anon. [Johann Martin Lappenberg?] 1845 255
51 Karl Müllenhoff 1845 257
52 Thomas Wright 1846 261
53 Ludwig Ettmüller 1847 263
54 Johann Paul Ernst Greverus 1848 265
55 Joseph Bachlechner 1849 269
56 Moriz Haupt 1849 271
57 J.M.Kemble 1849 273
58 Karl Müllenhoff 1849 279
59 Karl Müllenhoff 1849 283
60 Gísli Brynjúlfsson 1852 289
61 Benjamin Thorpe 1855 295
62 Joseph Bachlechner 1856 297
63 Karl Wilhelm Bouterwek 1856 301
64 Karl Joseph Simrock 1859 305
65 Daniel Henry Haigh 1861 315
66 Christian Wilhelm Michael Grein 1862 319
67 Adolf Holtzmann 1863 329
68 Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 1863 333
69 Henry Morley 1864 335
70 Karl Müllenhoff 1865 337
71 Karl Müllenhoff (and Wilhelm Scherer) 1868 339
72 Karl Müllenhoff 1869 343
73 Wilhelm Scherer 1869 351
74 Artur Köhler 1870 355
75 Artur Köhler 1870 361